Vinny Pezão at ADCC 2012 / Photo: Daren Bartlett
It’s been a good year for Vinny “Pezão” Magalhães. With three MMA wins under his belt, the black belt went on to take gold at this year’s ADCC, putting away Fabrício Werdum in the over-99kg division. Magalhães’s next challenge is an M-1 Global title defense against Mikhail Zayats.
“I didn’t train specifically for the ADCC at all,” he told the MMAJunkie website.
“I have goals for my career, mostly from my MMA career, so I could not put Abu Dhabi as a next goal. I just kept training MMA. Some guys they bring like five or six black belts, and they do like six to eight weeks of camp, just of Jiu-Jitsu. I could not afford to do that,” he added.
Now the black belt is getting ready to take on Zayats on October 14 in Phoenix.
“I saw him fight a couple times. He’s more of a ground guy too, but you never know with Sambo guys. They’re more ground guys, but they like to strike. He’s a Combat Sambo world champion so his style is similar to Fedor (Emelianenko),” he said on the website’s radio program.
